Blueprints: Crystal Jeans is oversharing, a memoir launch

Join us for the launch of a searing, reflective and truthful collection of essays by award-winning writer, Crystal Jeans.

My therapist believes that by the time we are seven, we already have our life mapped out. If we are going to be a workaholic, promiscuous or a high achiever or whatever, it’s all there in the blueprints by seven. ‘But we have the power to change the blueprints.

Jeans explores the struggles of addiction and mental health during the turbulent transition of adolescence into adulthood through to the strains of marriage, childbirth and parenting.

Growing up in south Wales, navigating gender and sexuality, Jeans writes about her relationships with others as well as her own body with a frank self-awareness. Fiercely feminist, brutally honest and full of sharp cultural references, Blueprints is not another trauma story but a vital validation of the act of writing about pain and loss while grappling with identity in a troubled world.

Crystal Jeans' collection of stories Light Switches are my Kryptonite was awarded the Wales Book of the Year. Her recent fiction includes The Inverts and Accidental Darlings. Her debut short-story collection The Vegetarian Tigers of Paradise was shortlisted for the Polari Prize. She lives in Pontypridd.